Cornell University Medical College - Samaritan Yearbook (New York, NY)

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QQ Oh, for the Life of a , W ' F iii QQ? , :ZX f R X JE? I :.f:-'.gf5gs',3gxf- --' AKE ONE NORMAL, lovable female, and one normal lovable male, add the ingredients of mutual interests, sense of humor, respect, plus that precious spark the gods called love, and you should have, in this, oh, so fairly realistic world of ours, certain established results. Either the ingredi- ents resist one another and the 'boy and girl part with regret, or they fall in love and eventually get married. Whether that sounds anticlimactic and even rather dull depends solely on the individual's opinion+and particularly on his marital status. Today, in the midst of the post-war confusion newly married couples fall in-to two groups. One, the college veteran and his wife, with either or both in undergraduate or graduate school. fWe have heard a great deal about this groupj Two, the traditional one--the pattern of the young businessman and his wife, who are attempting to achieve success in the harsh world of reality. Logically that just about covers the young marriage situation in the U. S. But somehow logic just doesn't hold water in this case. There is an exception to the young marriage formula in our society. And that exception is-you've guessed it-the case of the stalwart medical student and his adored but abandoned wife. The case of the medical student and his wife fits neither fof the customary marriage patterns, because the medical student himself fits neither class. He's a hybrid. Theoretically he is a student, and is so designated by the government. During his first two .years in medical college he is required to read the great books of Gray, Bodansky, Best and Taylor. Throughout his career he will enjoy classifying him- self as a student-but only within the secret confines of his heart, or at future conventions. However, elsewhere, as in clinics-he is an authority, there to aid the suffering and prescribe cures. With his professors, attending physicians and the house staff he is classified and treated as a student. But with the layman, the medical student is considered a medical authority. justifiably then we can call the medical student a hybrid. How does the wife reconcile her husband's dual roles? First of all, she gives him no other areas of worry. She must be the competent, practical housewife, and mother, who will run the house, manage the money, fif there is anyj, and bring up the children tif there are anyj. Hubby's whole waking existence can be devoted to Na- tional Boards, Public Health papers, exams, graphs and sedi- mentation rates. The future MD. must never know that scrub- bing floors causes aching backs, or that standing in market lines produce fallen arches. The medical student hears I '53 Med. Students Wife! By CORKY ROGERS enough of pain and complaints at the hospital. When he arrives home he expects a bright and cheerful helpmate to greet him, bring him his slippers and pipe, a well con- cocted old-fashioned, a plate of canapes, and then to place before him a succulent four-course dinner fmedical students have enormous appetitesj. During this hour long orgy of eating, her sole function is to remain clamlike, save for sympathetic clucks or innocuous statements designed to lead him on to further tales of his activities. The medical student will demand- that his wife show an interest in his work. But, you wives and future wives, don't be so naive as to take this demand literally. He wants you to be interested and even fairly intelligent about his work, bzzzf not foo ifzzfelligefzt. In his home the medical student can work out many of his problems of frustration. The wife can encourage what I like to call authoritarian therapy . At home the student always will be the authority and his wife always the student. So, don't become so intelligent that you thwart his authoritarian tendencies. If you ignore this advice don't be alarmed the evening the plates become flying discs, because you have interrupted his eulogy on Tolstoi's prin- ciples on diabetes to ask why Joslin, White and Root don't quite agree. The wives of all Cornell medical students must be plagued by similar nightmares. These ghoulish visions have but one plot-one interminable, ever agonizing and never ending plot. There are three stock characters-hero, heroine and villain. The medical student is the hero, his wife the heroine, but the villain-ah, there is absolutely nothing familiar about this villain. The villain is not so innocuous as the conventional leering, top-hatted devil. This villain is some 24 stories high, is large and 'broad and his arms stretch far over the city and enfold all peoples, rich and poor, educated and illiterate. Those people go scurrying to him, usually only for a short time. But, there are those he enfolds so strongly he never relinquishes them, his arms crush them and he so strangles them that they are lost forever from the world of reality. This ogre is no competition for ordinary mortals, because he wages his battles on the side of good. This combination of strength and virtue is powerful and one which no medical student or his wife fwho is usually the protagonist in these nightmares, can hope to beat. I well remember the first time I experienced this phantasy. I woke up screaming because my poor husband was being pulled apart. I was bracing myself against the door to our apartment, imploring him not to forsake his loving wife, but I could not hold him. The long arms of the New York Hospital were too strong for me, the tall tower of the Great White Whistle Works bent down and irrevocably tore him from my grasp. And the last wordsil heard were Hurry, hurry, hurry-Mrs. Eootz needs a pericardectomy and you're the only one to do it . And thus he left me. All my dreams are the same. I never win. In reality, the situation is not that bad. But it's close- close. So I warn you future wives, be prepared to live a life of husband starvation . Expect no sympathy from

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your heroic spouse. After a few weeks in medical school he is so imbued with the spirit of doing good, and give credit where credit is due, so interested in his work, that he sincerely believes no sacrifice too great for his noble purposes. If you persist in trying to claim his time you run the danger of being accused of undermining his morale and becoming subversive . flf the word subversive can apply to non-conformists and those unaccepting of social mores of all types, as it seems to, it can also be descriptive of you.j You must add one more qualification to your personalityg the ability to keep a stiff upper lip. When at the last minute you must cancel a theatre engagement to which you have looked forward for months because your noble husband suddenly remembers he must be the lab man that night, never complain. Send him off with smiles of encouragement and a loving gesture. Only when the door is safely closed may you cleave the general ear with horrid speech-and amaze indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears .. There is yet another puzzle in the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Medical Student. Yes, I'm speaking of the ever-pressing question-how to remain solvent during this inflation, and don't naively say- but you know, two can live as cheaply as one . That might be the case were the hospital or medical school generous enough to provide some good, but very cheap housing for its married students and families, or if there was not an inflation, or if they did not have to live in New York. But the fact remains that there is no cheap housing in the vicinity, there is an inflation, and Cornell Medical College is destined to remain at 1300 York Avenue. Everyone knows apartments are scarce as the proverbial hens' teeth and expensive. Food, clothing and minimum of enter- tainment are also essential, and they all cost solid coin. The solution is-money, and the surest way to get that is a job. But who has the time to spend on a job? You're right-you're right, none other than the plucky wife of the ever earnest medical student. There are other reasons, of course, for the medical student's wife to have a job. She probably would die of 'boredom or become neurotic if she didn't have something else to do besides keep house and wait for a wandering husband. But that reason detracts too much from my hard luck story. So I hurriedly pass on. Despite the various reasons prompting our wife to take a job, there is no doubt that the money she earns is a neces- sary implement to keep them together, body and soul. While dealing with the outside world , let me add a word of advice. Not only must you wives be financial supporters , but you must carry an even more taxing re- sponsibility. You it must be who will bring, in succinct form, cultural, political and social notes of importance to your medically isolated husband. It will be your duty to force him to read the paper, an interesting article or a book, or to have digested the facts yourself so that you can deliver them to him, unobtrusively, preferably over the dinner table. You might say something like this: Umm, this stew is fairly good- umm-darling, did you know that the Mitsui and Mitsibushi corporation in Japan may be forced to sell its stock on the open market ?-umm-but I should have put more onion in it . As is inevitably the case, such pithy condensations require much time and not a little gray matter. Naturally you have time to spare for such a worthy cause, and I tell you it is a worthy cause, if only to switch the dinner conversation from cirrhosis of the liver, or Add'ison's disease to other topics. So far now we have accumulated an im osin arra of u P 8' Y qualifications for our typical medical student's wife. There is just one more small point, but, although minor in im- portance, it might well be the straw that breaks the camel's back . The wife of the future M. D. also must be attractive. Now that doesn't sound too difficult a feat to perform, given the right clothes, and the time to be well groomed. The point is that the medical student wants his wife to be attractive come a New York blizzard, or summer heat. He wants her to look attractive any hour of the day or night. He wants this-and here I dare to risk repetition, because at the hospital he sees too many dumpy, sick, malformed and unattractive women . QQuote husband in unprofessional momentsj Only his wife, his symbol of all femininity, can make him believe that the world is still populated by nor- mal, healthy and well groomed women. He wantsthis illu- sion preserved, without having to sweat out cold cream, bobby pin booby traps, and assorted feminine aids. Frankly, it seems like an impossible situation. The only solution I can offer is to take advantage of Dr. Stander's generous edict that medical students on OB must live in . Use those sixty days to cold cream and generally restore your once normal beauty. Who knows, maybe the omnipotent Dr. Stander, despite his overwhelming knowledge of a woman's inner works, still had an eye for feminine pulchritude, or else a wife with forceful insight. Faced as wives and future wives are, therefore, with the problem of living happily with a dual personality medical student, you have before you a profound challenge. To ful- fill these extensive and imposing standards would require a twenty-eight hour day. A normal day in your life might run like this. Rise at six, so as to be attractive when your husband awakes. Have breakfast ready by 7:30. At 8 see your husband off to the hospital with a smile and a kiss. Then quickly wash the dishes, clean the house, dress, do the marketing, so as to be at work by 9. Even though you put in an eight hour working day, you must be home in time to prepare dinner, get cleaned up, welcome him at 6. During dinner listen to him orate on various medical problems, limiting your comments to sympathetic murmurs. Then wash the dishes, sweep, scrub, while your studious husband catches up on his medical reading. Later in the evening you darn his socks and shorts, and wash your hair, in between moments of absorbing more cultural knowledge. By 12, if you are ilucky, you should fbe in bed, trying to crowd in the necessary eight hours of sleep. Exaggerated as this schedule is, it should still prove that such requirements are not possible for the normal woman to meet faultlessly. If, .by any chance there is a medical student's wife or fiancee able to fulfill such standards, may I merely comment that her talents are wasted on a medical student. She should be in far greater fields of human en- deavor-serving as a corporation president, diplomat par excellence, or even as chief executive of our noble land. For those wives among us who are merely normal I only hope these weighty desires of our husbands never intrude too prominently into reality. And to you-the medical stu- dent-my only retort is, if you have even a reasonable fac- simile of this paragon lurking in your kitchen, be wholly thankful that God found such excellent use for Adam's rib. Amen! 54-